Entrepreneurial spirit versus bureaucratic control : differences and tendencies of convergence between the American and German systems of corporate governance

• Main Author: Suppan, Susanne
• Other Authors: Smith, Lionel (advisor)
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: McGill University 2002
• Subjects: Corporation law > United States; Corporation law > Germany
• Online Access: http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=78230

The question of how to best organize the governance structure of corporations in order to reconcile the various interests involved in a corporation has a long history. Legal and economic scholars from around the world have debated the issue since 1937, the year economists Adolf A. Berle and Gardener C. Means identified the agency cost problem inherent in the structure of the modern corporation (i.e. the separation of control from ownership rights). === Nowadays this debate has gained an added dimension. The consequences of the increasing globalization of economies raise the question as to whether this will also lead to the harmonization of national systems of corporate governance. === More particularly, this thesis analyses the possibility and consequently the direction of convergence between the German and the American system of corporate governance, despite significant differences in their structure, mechanisms and more generally, in the micro and macroeconomic environment.